


There Is No Euphoria In This Reality

by LordofLies



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, Re-Education, artificially-induced dementia, ordinary human cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos doesn’t know what “re-education” entails, but he thinks he knows what it means.  It means that your thoughts are not your own and your doubt must be stamped out, no matter the cost.</p><p>Carlos fears that, unless Cecil can learn to stop trusting and doubting in equal measure, that cost will be far too high.</p><p>(EDIT: Now with optional epilogue for those who prefer their endings sweet instead of bitter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Carlos does not know what station management’s “re-education” process involves, or how many times Cecil has been subjected to it in his years working as Night Vale’s most beloved radio personality, but he does know that a cold fear grips his heart when he hears Cecil mutter something about, “spoke to one just this morning, don’t understand…” after reading off another announcement from the city council about the non-existence of angels.  He hears Cecil utter a small “oh” as a scarlet envelop slides across the floor.

“It seems I’m being called in for re-education again this evening,” Cecil announces, his usually smooth voice trembling ever so slightly.  “Remember, Night Vale, angels do not exist.  If you think you see one, or you think you’ve spoken with one, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.  Remember that, Night Vale.  You cannot trust your own mind to tell you what is real.  That’s why we have government!  To let us know what is real, and what is just our fevered imaginations getting the best of us.”

He continues with the report as though nothing has happened, but Carlos knows that he is thinking about the unpleasant evening he has ahead of him.

 

Carlos waits outside the station that night for Cecil to be released, but he eventually nods off as hours turn into more hours and the moon hangs like a ghost overhead.  Somewhere around 4am (he assumes, though time in Night Vale is somewhat less than reliable), he is awoken by the sound of the station door opening.  Cecil stumbles out of the building, his eyes shadowed and vacant, a white bandage wrapped around his head.  Carlos rushes to his side and helps him down the street toward his apartment.

The walk is slow.  Cecil is silent and his footing is unsure, and Carlos is afraid.

When they finally reach Cecil’s apartment, Carlos leads him to the bed and he lies down and falls asleep almost immediately.  Cecil looks remarkably fragile as he sleeps.  He curls in on himself, his arms pulled up across his chest as though shielding it, as though if he could curl up small enough he could sleep unseen and undisturbed by the creatures that lurk in the shadows of the hall and the dark of the mind.  Carlos plucks the heavy-rimmed glasses from his nose and puts them on the bedside table, before dragging his tired feet to the living room and collapsing on the couch, still wearing his lab coat and shoes.

 

In the morning Cecil is already up by the time Carlos awakens.  The smell of eggs wafts in from the kitchen and Carlos stumbles, bleary-eyed, to where Cecil is standing over the stove, a spatula in one hand and a plate of scrambled eggs in the other.  He smiles widely when Carlos enters the room.

“Morning, sleepy-head,” Cecil pipes cheerfully, ushering Carlos over to the small kitchen table.

“Sleepy-head…” Carlos grunts.  He sits down and stares at the plate of eggs Cecil puts before him.  Cecil is quite the chef, Carlos has discovered.  He’s never tasted scrambled eggs quite as good as Cecil’s.  The consistency is soft and fluffy, not too dry or too runny, whipped with sour cream, seasoned with just the right amount of salt and pepper, and topped with a garnish of minced chives.  Once, Carlos had asked him where he learned to cook, and Cecil had said only that his mother had taught him, a faraway look in his eyes.

“Did you bring me home last night?” Cecil asks, shovelling a spoonful of egg into his mouth as he sits down across from Carlos.  “I can’t remember leaving the station, or coming home.”

Carlos nods, and begins to eat.  “They kept you late and I brought you back.”  He pauses, the cloud of sleep clearing.   “Are you alright, Cecil?”

His lover looks confused for a moment.  “Of course I’m alright.  Why wouldn’t I be?”

“The re-education session.  They kept you really late.  What happened?”

Cecil looks uncomfortable.

“Re-education?  I don’t know what you…” he frowns, brows furrowed, thinking frantically.

“You had a bandage over your head last night,” Carlos adds, leaning across the table to brush Cecil’s bangs off his forehead.  His skin is unblemished.

“Bandages…” Cecil mutters, and then suddenly perks up.  “Oh!  Those!  Those weren’t bandages, sweet Carlos.  That was just traditional radio-training headgear.  All station staff members are required to wear them during training sessions and staff meetings!”

“Right,” Carlos says, unconvinced.  He watches Cecil eat his eggs with a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.  Cecil is too trusting, too ready to believe what the mayor and the city council tell him is the truth.  And yet, he is also too inquisitive.  He does believe what he sees, and he has difficulty reconciling what he knows through experience to be real and what his superiors tell him is real.  He lacks the crucial skill of being able to keep his mouth shut about what he knows is real, despite what he has been told.  Cecil doesn’t have it in him to be dishonest, or to tell the town any news whose truth could be questioned, and so he gets into trouble.

Carlos doesn’t know what “re-education” entails, but he thinks he knows what it means.  It means that your thoughts are not your own and your doubt must be stamped out, no matter the cost.

Carlos fears that, unless Cecil can learn to stop trusting and doubting in equal measure, that cost will be far too high.

 

In the next two months, Cecil slips up three times, and three times he is called in for re-training.  Carlos sits outside the station through the long nights, his stomach clenched and churning, as he curses the forces that control Night Vale, who have no ounce of compassion in their bodies.  After each session Cecil seems a little more distracted and forgetful.  They are small things at first.  Forgetting to turn the oven off, or change his clothes, or eat lunch.  But with increasing frequency, Cecil begins to forget bigger and more important things, like the time and place of a date with Carlos, or the location of his apartment, or to go grocery shopping when he has run out of food.  He is losing weight and looking less and less put-together.

With each re-training session Carlos can see Cecil’s difficulty with everyday tasks and occurrences growing, and the cold fear that has taken root at the base of his neck creeps down his spine like poison ivy.

On the night of the third re-education session, when Cecil finally stumbles out of the building, Carlos rushes up to him and catches him before he can fall.  He pulls out a small flashlight and shines it in Cecil’s eyes.  There is no response.  Cecil does not blink and his pupils, blown wide, do not shrink.  Carefully, Carlos unwinds the bandage from his head.  A red line runs across Cecil’s forehead, where the skin has been broken with surgical tools.

Trembling, Carlos pulls Cecil’s limp and terrifying light body against his chest and buries his face in the crook of his neck.

“Let’s go home,” he whispers as he gathers Cecil’s compliant form up into his arms.  He carries his lover back to their apartment and lays him down on the bed, where Cecil closes his eyes and falls asleep.  Instead of sleeping on the couch, Carlos slips into the bed beside Cecil and holds him tightly through the night.

 

In the morning Carlos finds Cecil standing in the kitchen, looking upset.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“We don’t have any eggs,” Cecil says, frustrated.  Carlos opens the refrigerator.  A carton of eggs stares back at him.  He pulls it out and opens it.  Half a dozen speckled brown eggs sit comfortably in their pulped paper nest.  He looks up at Cecil, who is staring at the eggs with a mixture of relief and confusion.  He accepts the eggs tentatively when Carlos offers them to him, then just stands there, holding them and looking frightened.  Carlos nods toward the stove.  Cecil turns to stare at it, seeming overwhelmed by the sheer number of knobs and fixtures it possess and baffled by the eggs in his hands and the impossible task that looms before him.

Carlos feels terribly like he is testing Cecil, and that it is a test they both know he is doomed to fail.  Gently, he takes the egg carton from Cecil’s trembling fingers.

“I’ll make breakfast this morning,” he says, and he’s never seen Cecil look so grateful.

 

After that morning, Cecil grows steadily worse and worse.  He maintains his cool composure on air, but sometimes it fractures, usually when Cecil comes to a point in his broadcast when he would offer his own opinions on things or tell a personal story.  Far too often he is left stuttering into the microphone before switching quickly to a word from his sponsors or the weather.  During one broadcast, he gives the weather twice, and Carlos, listening to the small, clunky radio in his lab as he runs tests, finds an overwhelming sense of grief rising up in his chest.  Tears fall from his face as a jaunty tune plays over the airwaves, and he knows, finally and without hope or doubt, that he is losing Cecil bit by bit.

Carlos slams his fist down on the table, tears dripping into his thick stubble, and curses that which he loves most about Cecil.  If he was a little less honest, a little less trusting, a little less kind, Carlos is certain it would not have come to this.  Cecil cared too much in a world that cares too little.  Night Vale is not kind to the selfless and the gentle.  It feeds on them.  It fed on Cecil.  Cecil, who always had too much spirit and not enough sense.  Cecil, who could not reconcile contradicting truths quickly enough to keep the malevolent forces that employed him happy. 

Cecil, who slipped too often and questioned too much in the pursuit of journalistic excellence and public service, and so again and again they took him away and they made him forget.  They locked him up and drilled into him literally and figuratively that they were right and he was wrong and he should believe only them, because what he sees and hears is a lie and he is nothing but a tool and mouthpiece to keep order through fear in a town that cowers beneath cruel and tyrannical powers.

And Carlos—sad, pathetic, useless Carlos—can do nothing but watch as the man he loves slips through his parted fingers like grains of desert sand blowing away into the empty night.

 

For his slip-up on air, Cecil is again taken away for re-training that night, and the following morning Carlos wanders into the bathroom to find Cecil standing there, naked, looking as if he did not know how he had gotten there or what he was doing.

“Cecil?” Carlos asks tentatively.  Cecil turns to him, and for a horrible moment, there is no recognition in his eyes.  Then the moment passes, and there is only relief.

“Carlos!  Umm, I don’t know… what I should be doing,” Cecil admits, looking hopelessly lost.  “I know I’m supposed to be doing something in here, since it’s morning, but I can’t… remember.”  He looks pained, wracking his brain, trying to recall what he should be doing.  Carlos steps closer to him and takes his hand.

“I think you were going to take a shower.”  He struggles to keep his voice even.

“A shower, yes.  A shower,” Cecil says, looking relieved again.  He glances at the shower, then again at Carlos, panic rising in his gaunt and tired face, and Carlos can feel his heart breaking.  He reaches into the shower and turns the knob, releasing a jet of lukewarm water.  Carefully, he strips out of his boxers and guides Cecil into the shower with him.  He washes Cecil’s hair, and then his own, kisses Cecil’s neck as he rubs soap onto his limbs and back.  Cecil just leans against him, eyes glazed, not speaking, and the silence frightens Carlos more than he will admit even to himself.

It had come to the point where Carlos had to restrict his scientific endeavours to small bouts of free time when Cecil was at work, and late nights when his lover was asleep.  The rest of his time was spent with Cecil, helping him though those everyday tasks which had now become impossible hurdles in Cecil’s routine.  If left to his own devices he would just sit in his armchair or lie on his bed, staring vacantly at something Carlos could not see.  When Carlos came to him he would smile and his confusion or apathy would momentarily vanish.  He did whatever Carlos asked him to and did his best to be an engaging conversation partner, though often he would forget what they had been talking about after a few minutes.  It broke his heart to see Cecil, who always had something to say, no matter the subject, at a loss for words.

But Carlos would not break, and he would not leave, not now, not when Cecil needed him more than anyone had ever needed him before.  The mysteries of Night Vale would have to remain unsolved, their secrets un-investigated, because if Night Vale had taught Carlos anything it was that some things are more important than the pursuit of truth.

 

It is on a quiet evening a few weeks later that Carlos makes his decision.  It is one he has been contemplating for some time—months, if he is being honest with himself—but he did not believe Cecil would have ever agreed to it.  No matter how badly Night Vale hurt him or how much it took from him, it was still his home, and that word carried a powerful meaning for Cecil.

Carlos stands outside the radio station, waiting for Cecil to finish his broadcast.  When Cecil comes out and walks towards him, there is a distant wonder in his eyes.  He walks up to Carlos, narrowing his eyes as if he is too bright to look at it, as if he is a puzzle that Cecil is trying to figure out.  Cautiously, he reachs out a hand to touch Carlos’s face.

“You are beautiful,” Cecil tells him, brushing a strand of dark hair out of his face.  Carlos smiles warmly, but his lover’s next words freeze the blood in his veins and stop his heart.

“What’s your name?”

Carlos closes his eyes and cups Cecil’s hovering hand against the side of his face.  Hot tears drip down his cheeks and trickle between their fingers.  When he lowers their hands, lacing their fingers together as he does so, Cecil looks up at him with wonder and a hint of confusion.  With one hand Carlos wipes the tears from his face and with the other he leads Cecil down the street to his car and ushers him inside.  Cecil complies quietly; still unsure of what is happening or where this strange, beautiful man might be taking him.

“I have… some place to be,” Cecil says glancing back at the radio station with longing.  Carlos starts the car.  “A radio show,” he says, his confidence growing.  “I’m the voice of the town.  It needs me.”  He reaches for the door.  Carlos locks it before he can touch the handle.

“No,” he chokes out.  Cecil turns to him, confused.  “This town is killing you, Cecil.  You have no idea how much you have forgotten.”  He releases the parking break and puts the car in reverse.  “We’re leaving, Night Vale, Cecil.  We’ll go somewhere they can’t hurt you anymore.”

His words fill Cecil with terror.

“Leave… Night Vale?” he whispers, eyes wide.  “No, no.  I have to stay.  The town needs me.  I belong here.”  He tugs uselessly on the door handle.

“You belong with me,” Carlos says, feeling another onslaught of tears about to overwhelm him, “And you deserve a future, and some kind of happiness.”  The car speeds out of Night Vale and down the long desert highway, and Carlos leans over to kiss Cecil, who, after his surprise wears off, kisses him back earnestly.

“But why do we have to leave?” Cecil asks, his voice small and quiet.  Carlos bites his tongue.

“Because it’s not real,” he hears himself say, and silently, he curses himself for it—for betraying Cecil’s trust in this way, now, when he is at his most vulnerable, and knowing that he could not have done anything else.  “Night Vale isn’t real.”

“It’s not?” Cecil asks, and the question is very real.

“No.  It was all a dream, a long dream.  But you and I, we’re real, Cecil.  And somewhere at the end of this road is a city or a house in the country, and that’s real, and that’s where we’re going.  And once we’re there, you won’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“Okay,” Cecil complies, leaning his head against Carlos’s shoulder, trusting himself utterly to a man he perceives as a stranger.  “What did you say your name was?” he asks, looking up at Carlos with wide blue eyes.

“Carlos,” he whispers.  “My name is Carlos.”

Cecil sighs, and closes his eyes, nuzzling against Carlos’s shoulder.

“Carlos.  Carlos.  Carlos.”  He whispers Carlos’s name like a mantra, or a life-line keeping him tethered to reality, whatever he perceived that to be.  “Beautiful Carlos.  Perfect Carlos.  Lovely Carlos.  My Carlos.”

 _Yes_ , Carlos thinks.  _Yes, I am yours.  And I will not leave you, even if I have to remind you every day, every hour, that I love you.  I will remember everything that you cannot, and we will be okay._

“We’ll be okay,” Carlos repeats to himself, out loud, as the tires of his truck kick dust up into the indigo sky and the desert stretches out in front of them.  Night Vale has disappeared into the darkness, and Carlos prays with all his heart to a god he never believed in that neither of them will ever see it again.


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By popular demand, an optional epilogue!

Carlos never tired of sitting out on the sand and watching the ocean with Cecil, who had lived in the desert all his life and never seen so much water except once, when he was much younger.  He would stare out at the rolling tides, eyes as blue as the sea and the sky, and Carlos would be filled with a sense of tranquility.

Nearly two hundred miles north of Santiago, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, it seemed they had finally found a place to belong.  It was comforting to Carlos to speak the language of his childhood again, even if it had taken some time to adjust to the regional Chilean dialect.  Cecil was taking his attempts to learn Spanish in stride, and in spite of all of Carlos’s fears that he would not be able to recover from what station management had done to him, the lessons seemed to be helping with his recovery of both short and long-term memory.  After nearly two years away from Night Vale, he was still forgetful and had lost great swaths of time that Carlos did not think he would ever regain, but he could once again function on his own and remember who Carlos was.  Much to Cecil’s confusion and concern, he had broken down in tears one afternoon when Cecil had asked him if he remembered their first date at Gino’s, the portabella mushrooms and running tests on trees in the park.  It was more than he had ever hoped for when they fled that cursed town that he could have the Cecil he thought lost returned to him.

Cecil seemed to really love Chile, with its high mountains, long beaches, and familiar deserts.  Their home was a small house at the base of the mountains, with an even smaller chicken coop and several chickens, as well as a garden.  Carlos had found work with a team of scientists studying the geology of the area and he had been welcomed eagerly among their ranks.  While Carlos was away, Cecil either puttered around the house or wandered outside to bask in the nostalgic desert heat.  Some days he even spent time in the nearby village of Vicuña.  He got on well with the village children, and despite his poor communication skills, the villagers adored him.  Of course, Carlos did not understand how anyone could _not_ adore Cecil, with his wide smile, rampant enthusiasm, and flare for the dramatic.

He was recovering well now that there was no one fumbling around inside his head, or constantly telling him that what he saw was not real.  No more paranoia.  No more fear.  Night Vale seemed like a distant, uneasy nightmare, and Carlos was glad of that.

Now and then Cecil would bring up his hometown, but he never asked if they could go back.  He seemed to understand now that his loyalty to Night Vale had been destroying him, but Carlos could still see that he was homesick to some degree.

One night, as the two of them lay twined in bed together, Cecil asked him a question.

“Do you think they have a radio station in La Serena?” he asked, and Carlos hummed thougtfully.

“It’s a bigger town, so I would imagine that yes, they would probably have radio.”

“I wonder if they need any more employees…” he murmured.  Carlos smiled, and ruffled his hair.

“You know, I’m sure that even if they don’t, they would hire you in an instant.  You have pretty good credentials, after all.”

“I do,” Cecil agreed solemnly.

“Though, you’d have to do the broadcasts in Spanish.”

“I’m learning.  I’ll get it,” Cecil insisted.  Carlos placed a gentle kiss on his brow, and then his lips.

“Yes.  Yes you will,” he said.

In the dark he could Cecil smiling, and in that moment, everything was right with the world.


End file.
